"The game I play is a very interesting one. It's imagination in a tight straightjacket, which is this: that it has to agree with the known laws of physics. [...] It requires imagination to think of what's possible, and then it requires an analysis back, checking to see whether it fits, it's allowed, according to what's known, okay?"

A DNA computer, the koala genome, and the invisibility of LGBTQ+ researchers

July012018

Ep. 498: Dwarf Galaxy Update

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The Milky Way has gobbled up dozens of dwarf galaxies and added them to its structure. Today we're going to look at the ongoing hunt for the wreckage of past mergers. And what we've discovered about dwarf galaxies in general.

Backchat June 2018: Lab health, email briefings, and CRISPR

June282018

Increasing transparency in animal research to sway public opinion, and a reaching a plateau in human mortality

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Public opinion on the morality of animal research is on the downswing in the United States. But some researchers think letting the public know more about how animals are used in experiments might turn things around. Online News Editor David Grimm joins Sarah Crespi to talk about these efforts.
Sarah also talks Ken Wachter of the University of California, Berkeley about his group’s careful analysis of data from all living Italians born 105 or more years before the study. It turns out the risk of dying does not continue to accelerate with age, but actually plateaus around the age of 105. What does this mean for attempts to increase human lifespan?
In this month’s book segment, Jen Golbeck talks with Simon Winchester about his book The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World. Read more book reviews at our books blog, Books et al.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
[Image: Chris Jones/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

June232018

June212018

New evidence in Cuba’s ‘sonic attacks,’ and finding an extinct gibbon—in a royal Chinese tomb

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Since the 2016 reports of a mysterious assault on U.S. embassy staff in Cuba, researchers have struggled to find evidence of injury or weapon. Now, new research has discovered inner-ear damage in some of the personnel complaining of symptoms. Former International News Editor Rich Stone talks to host Sarah Crespi about the case, including new reports of a similar incident in China, and what kind of weapon—if any—might have been involved.
Sarah also talks with Staff Writer Gretchen Vogel about the bones of an extinct gibbon found in a 2200- to 2300-year-old tomb in China. Although gibbons were often featured in historical poetry and paintings, these bones confirm their presence and the fact that they were distinct from today’s species.
Read the research.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
[Image: Pedro Szekely; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

June182018

Ep. 496: Update on Stellar Populations I, II, and III

June142018

The places where HIV shows no sign of ending, and the parts of the human brain that are bigger—in bigger brains

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Nigeria, Russia, and Florida seem like an odd set, but they all have one thing in common: growing caseloads of HIV. Science Staff Writer Jon Cohen joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about this week’s big read on how the fight against HIV/AIDS is evolving in these diverse locations.
Sarah also talks with Armin Raznahan of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, about his group’s work measuring which parts of the human brain are bigger in bigger brains. Adult human brains can vary as much as two times in size—and until now this expansion was thought to be evenly distributed. However, the team found that highly integrative regions are overrepresented in bigger brains, whereas regions related to processing incoming sensory information such as sight and sound tend to be underrepresented.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
[Image: Misha Friedman; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

June072018

Science books for summer, and a blood test for predicting preterm birth

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What book are you taking to the beach or the field this summer? Science’s books editor Valerie Thompson and host Sarah Crespi discuss a selection of science books that will have you catching comets and swimming with the fishes.
Sarah also talks with Mira Moufarrej of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, about her team’s work on a new blood test that analyzes RNA from maternal blood to determine the gestational age of a fetus. This new approach may also help predict the risk of preterm birth.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
[Image: William Warby/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

June042018

Ep. 494: Icy Moons Update 2018

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Thanks to Cassini and other spacecraft, we've learned a tremendous amount about the icy worlds in the Solar System, from Jupiter's Europa to Saturn's Enceladus, to Pluto's Charon. Geysers, food for bacteria, potential oceans under the ice and more. What new things have we learned about these places?

May312018

The first midsize black holes, and the environmental impact of global food production

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Astronomers have been able to detect supermassive black holes and teeny-weeny black holes but the midsize ones have been elusive. Now, researchers have scanned through archives looking for middle-size galaxies and found traces of these missing middlers. Host Sarah Crespi and Staff Writer Daniel Clery discuss why they were so hard to find in the first place, and what it means for our understanding of black hole formation.
Farming animals and plants for human consumption is a massive operation with a big effect on the planet. A new research project that calculated the environmental impact of global food production shows highly variable results for different foods—and for the same foods grown in different locations. Sarah talks with one of the researchers—Joseph Poore of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom—about how understanding this diversity can help cut down food production’s environmental footprint and help consumers make better choices.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
Listen to previous podcasts.
[Image: Miltos Gikas/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]